


Crime Scene Photographs

by ScarletteStar1



Category: The Fall (TV 2013), The X-Files
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 11:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20994041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/pseuds/ScarletteStar1





	Crime Scene Photographs

She looks back and it’s blurry. Distorted.

She looks back and it’s like flipping through photographs of a crime scene.

Moments possess meaning. Moments convey feeling.

They find seats at the bar. A jazz ensemble plays in a corner.

“When I first met you, I thought you were a Barbie doll,” Dana says, or maybe she imagines saying it at some random date way in the future. "But like way more serious. And possibly mean."

How could Stella possibly respond to this? She tucks a lock of platinum hair behind an ear and coughs. Would she smile and drop her eyes? Would she take Dana’s hand and pull her toward the bank of elevators so they could ascend to her room?

It is impossible to say.

There is truth in words, like there is truth in a photograph or in any other work of art. But it is subjective. Speculative. These are not arguments that will hold up in court. Stella hears her voice argue, pale and thin, among the male cacophony. She shrugs and scowls and wants to turn all the photos over so she does not have to look.

How do you proceed from seeing someone as a plastic doll to seeing them as a living, breathing human? How do you reach for their hand and feel desire rise in you with the most impossible force? How do you get from the point of _You are a stranger who might be competition_, to _You are the woman I need to see at the day’s end?_

How does it happen?

Stella watches Dana sleep and feels she will stop breathing if she so much as deviates for one instant from her bodily rhythm.

She thinks of the files of death and compares them with her own albums of life and love. How do you go from looking at a photograph of something colorful and fun, to knowing your pulse exists in another’s form?

Stella lies awake, watching the rise and fall of Dana’s chest, and wonders.


End file.
